Thursday, August 18, 2016

New column day

Here, on the forces competing to determine the scope and shape of Canada's security state - and why we shouldn't think it's good enough to settle for a status quo which includes needless intrusions into our civil liberties.

For further reading...
- Jim Bronskill reported here on Randall Garrison's plans to bring C-51 back before Parliament rather than letting the Libs keep delaying. And the bill establishing a closed-door parliamentary committee to review security matters (subject to full government control over both what it sees and what it reports) can be found here.
- CBC reported here on the outline of Aaron Driver's case, while Elizabeth Thompson highlighted how the system set up under C-51 failed utterly in managing an individual who was identified as a risk. And again, Murtada Hassain discussed Driver from the standpoint of the congregants of the mosque he attended.
- Finally, Bronskill also reports on the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police's resolution calling for people to be required to hand over electronic passwords. And Susana Mas reports on Ralph Goodale's response.

2 comments:

Many signs arising that suggests that PM Trudeau is smiling his way around the questions - hoping that - as with many (the majority) of protests - most protesters will blow off steam and then smugly feel they have had their say and all will be good. Most land developers/speculators for example actually factor in public protests as a cost of doing business and even have activities on their project plan time lines to cover it. Does PM Trudeau want to be compared to land speculators?

Never mind being compared to land speculators (and others just looking to minimize or exploit social concerns), it sounds like his main interest even in talking about social values is in pitching to them. See e.g. Paul Wells' column: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/08/12/-paul-wells.html .